Wifi, Bluetooth, and GPS purchase Racist Ads on Facebook

Off doesn’t mean off under IOS 11, but that’s OK your iPhone is too complex for you to fix anyway; You’ll soon know where you are with super accuracy thanks to new GPS chips; and Russian election tampering on Facebook was a feature, not a bug.
All this plus Flying Taxis on this week’s GeekSpeak.

Verizon recently notified 8,500 customers in 13 states that they will be disconnected on October 17 because they used roaming data on another network. But these customers weren’t doing anything wrong—they are being served by rural networks that were set up for the purpose of extending Verizon’s reach into rural areas.

We’ve all been there. You’re driving down the highway, just as Google Maps instructed, when Siri tells you to “proceed east for one-half mile, then merge onto the highway.” But you’re already on the highway.

The batch of more than 3,000 Russian-bought ads that Facebook is preparing to turn over to Congress shows a deep understanding of social divides in American society, with some ads promoting African American rights groups, including Black Lives Matter, and others suggesting that these same groups pose a rising political threat, say people familiar with the covert influence campaign.

What does it take to advertise on Facebook to people who openly call themselves “Jew haters” and want to know “how to burn Jews”? About $10 and 15 minutes, according to what the investigative nonprofit ProPublica recently uncovered.